Overcoming AS?

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I'm an adult of 20 years of age, and finding out about Asperger Syndrome has really explained an enormous amount of my life. I am undiagnosed, though I’ve got every other form of confirmation, from the outlook friends and family, to the tons of reading I’ve done on the subject.

I was watching a documentary Saturday night about how the brain retains its plasticity throughout its entire life, meaning that it is capable of being remolded and exercised throughout its entire life. It was previously believed that this ability was only available to us at critical ages (10 and younger) and hardwires after a time, but new research shows that the brain never loses that elasticity, that ability to be molded.

I did get to hear a few interesting stories concerning this. It's possible to overcome obsessive compulsive disorder by just changing your way of thinking, ie., you get a thought, then tell yourself it's a glitch in your brain, then you somehow act against that thought. It's been shown to work as well as any psychiatric medicine, and it has definitely worked for me, and I'm really not suffering the same stress I did as before I found out about AS (though I still feel a few of the impulses).

There was also the story of an older man (50s or 60s probably, his son was a full adult) who suffered a stroke and lost his ability to walk. He regained his ability by learning to crawl like a little baby, then progressing the way he did when he was an infant, and completely regained his ability. After he had passed away, they autopsied his brain and found that though he had suffered very heavy damage to the areas responsible for walking, other areas of his brain took over the function. The same thing happens after a person becomes blind; the third of the brain dedicated to vision helps enhance the sense of touch, smell, taste, and hearing because it has nothing else to do, and has the chance to be used for something else.

In short, the brain never loses its ability to lose and grow, and keeps that plasticity until the person dies. Given this, is it possible to teach the brain to learn things it would have had trouble doing previously? One of my biggest troubles was making eye contact, I don’t really like doing it, but I tried doing it for a few days, and although making the effort feels kind of exhausting or keeping my eyes looking out at eye level altogether (research shows that eye contact for an aspie triggers the fight-or-flight mindset… either stay and fight or run!), it makes social situations feel a little more comfortable.

The thing is too, I don’t really want to blame NTs for not understanding, it’s not really their fault, I come off just as strangely to them as they do to me, and face it, deviation in any set of circumstances is understandably hard to deal with. I can’t really blame anyone around me for not understanding me, because for all 20 years of my life, we didn’t have a clue I had this, so nothing could be done about it. Maybe being Aspie explains why I can function so well in settings that require thought process, but I’ve always really wanted a legitimate social life with people, and have really wanted it for a few years now, but have never been able to get it. I’ve always been odd and at times quite immature, and do tend to have a few social habits I think are genuinely worth fixing if possible, and I want to.

I don’t know, maybe there’s a lot I still don’t know, I’m not very well studied up on the physiology of autism or Asperger Syndrome, and so I am really hoping for feedback. Any research confirming or denying what I’m attempting, I’m open to read. Thank you in advance.

I'm glad you're here. I really like your attitude.
I practiced for a few decades and now I am great at eye contact.
I have some in-laws who are mad at me for saying I have Asperger's. They did not know me when I was a child. They don't know how hard I've studied human interactions or the sensory issues I have dealt with. So, they don't know, and I'm simply not going to talk to them about it any more. We have plenty of other topics to discuss. I'm still not NT, but I've made progress and now I can usually keep the people around me comfortable. Or at least I think I can.

I do believe that the brain has incredible plasticity. People who have had severe trauma to the brain have worked to achieve incredible things through hard work and the dedication of special people who never gave up on them.